


Ice Is Simply Frozen Water

by boxoftheskyking



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dark, Drug Use, M/M, man, really quite dark, torture of teenage boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-05 23:07:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short, dark bit of Sherlock's past--his first meeting with Raz (the graffiti artist from Blind Banker)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ice Is Simply Frozen Water

**Author's Note:**

> This was a gift for starfireblues. It is really not happy at all even a little bit.

Sherlock thinks he may be getting sick of opiates. He has loved it, though. He loves seeing the connections between things spun out before his eyes, related minutiae drawn together by threads of color like rivers or ladders or a particular kind of wood grain.

But after a while his brain feels divorced from the rest of him and he just … floats. He feels weightless and inconsequential. His body will freeze up for hours at a time while his brain floats off, leaving him to wake up cold, cramped and miserable.

He is sitting on a wooden chair, leaning against the wall. He is in a basement, in a laundry room that contains no laundry. He is leaning against the wall and watching Carl and Tony fill vials at an old Formica-topped table. Behind them the washer and dryer sit silent and empty, and an old, paint-spattered, deep-basined sink drips ominously in the still of the room. Lorna is asleep on the ground beside him, curled up against the wall with one thumb in her mouth, blonde hair looking more and more grey each time he sees her. He watches them all and says nothing.

Perhaps a minute passes, perhaps a century, and there is a knock at the door upstairs. Carl exits and reenters with a young boy in tow, no more than seventeen and sporting a relatively new bruise on his temple. And seventeen is a stretch, Sherlock thinks. He is definitely trying to look older. Sherlock dials his estimate down to fifteen.

“This all of it, then?” Carl asks, taking a plastic bag from the boy. The boy looks up at him with a hard jaw, trying to come across tough but really looking like a kid wearing his father’s jacket. He digs in the back of his sagging trousers and pulls out an envelope. Carl dumps it out on the table and starts to count the bills while Tony continues his work at the table. The boy watches nervously as Carl finishes counting and turns to the bag, dumping vials out across the table. There is a moment of silence.

“You fucking with me, Raz?” Carl growls. The boy starts.

“What? No, no, of course n—”

“You’d better be fucking with me. This had better be a joke, Raz,” Carl steps around the table to pin the boy against the dryer. “Not a very funny joke, Raz. But a joke nevertheless. Is this a joke?”

Raz tries to keep his feet as Carl pushes him harder and harder into the steel frame of the dryer. “No, it ain’t a fucking  _joke_. That’s what I sold; that’s everything that’s left.”

 Carl releases him. Sherlock watches the set of his shoulders with interest—he is playing cat and mouse, now. He will fake understanding until the boy lets his guard down, then he’ll pounce. If Sherlock were still connected to his body he would cross his legs and settle in to watch. As it is, his body remains frozen against the wall.

“Right. Okay.” Carl pats the boy on the shoulder and turns back to survey the remaining vials. “Okay. I see what happened. It’s okay. McCleod’s boys jumped you; you were outnumbered. It’s understandable.”

The tension seeps out of the boy’s spine. Inside his brain, Sherlock grins like small child at a pantomime.  _He’s right behind you_. 

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what happened,” Raz says, words stumbling over each other. “I’m sorry, Carl, I’m really so—”

Carl taps Tony’s shoulder once and Tony is up like spring. He slams Raz back against the hard edge of the sink and grabs him by the throat. The boy actually squeaks and his feet kick ineffectually at the cement floor. Tony really is huge, Sherlock’s brain comments. It’s easy to forget because he so rarely actually stands up.

“I’m not going to fire you, Razzy,” Carl says, leaning in towards him. Sherlock can imagine the onion-and-stale-tobacco breath clouding the boy’s vision. “I’m going to  _teach_ you. You have to learn what is and is not acceptable. This,” he reaches up and does something unpleasant in the vicinity of Raz’s face, “Is not acceptable. Tony.”

Tony bends the boy back as far as he can go, then pushes him down another few inches so his feet come off the ground. He’s hanging off the side of the sink, sharp metal edge cutting into the small of his back, both flailing hands grabbed in one of Tony’s giant ones. Carl holds the boy's feet together and lifts so he that is horizontal, like a magician’s assistant levitating above the ground. 

A part of Sherlock’s brain says  _Enough_. But Sherlock’s body is frozen, turned to ice, so he ignores it.

Carl stretches up the boy’s body to the rusty faucet and turns it on full blast. Raz splutters and tries to turn his face away from the spray, but Tony’s hand on his throat keeps him still. Sherlock can see a perfectly framed portion of the boy’s face underwater, bracketed between Tony’s hand and the faucet, framed by Tony on one side and Carl on the other. Sherlock’s brain is struck by the aesthetics of the scene, the near symmetry that’s just wrong enough to be beautiful. Tony tips the boy’s chin farther back and his nose fills with water. Sherlock can see from his position on the other side of the room that the water is far from clear. He can see corrosion in the pipes under the sink and can almost taste the rust on his tongue. 

 _Enough_  his brain says louder, but his body still can’t move. 

The boy starts to choke, kicking his feet. Carl has been muttering something, but his words are inaudible over the roar of the water and the desperate little noises the boy is making. He kicks harder and one of his untied trainers flies off to crash against the table, knocking a few vials to the floor. Tony pulls him up by the chin and cracks his forehead against the faucet. The boy is making little “Ah, ah” noises every time he manages to twist his face out of the water.

Sherlock’s lungs start to freeze up in twisted sympathy and his stomach turns over. The boy’s jerking isn’t just in his legs, now. His whole body shakes as he desperately tries to cough, stomach undulating under his ripped t-shirt. Sherlock’s nausea grows and a shrill buzz starts in his ears.

 _ENOUGH_  his brain screams but he can’t move. He wants someone to  _do_  something, but Carl won’t let go and Tony won’t let go and Lorna is asleep on the floor, sucking on her thumb and Sherlock can’t move. 

The boy yanks his now-purple face to the side, getting a tiny breath of air. He cries, one short, loud sob before Tony pushes him back. Sherlock’s lungs loosen and his body suddenly breaks its shell of ice and wakes.

“Enough,” he bellows, rusty baritone echoing off the concrete walls. He’s standing, suddenly, back straight and eyes blazing. He can see himself, in his mind: skin yellow in the basement light, hair radiating from his head like a pitch-black halo. Carl drops the boy. Tony holds him for another moment, the boy’s back twisted grotesquely, then drops him to the ground. The boy shudders and gasps and falls still.

Sherlock stares at Carl and Carl tries to hide a shiver.

“Learned your lesson, ye little shit?” He kicks out at Raz, who doesn’t seem to notice. “Come on, Tony. We’ve got work to do.” They scoop the vials off the table and into Raz’s plastic bag before casting Sherlock a wary glance and leaving. Sherlock sinks back into his chair and closes his eyes to watch the color play against his eyelids.

He may have fallen asleep, or he may have just wandered down a path of connections that ended in one dead end after another. When he opens his eyes again, it is in response to wet pressure on his knee.

Raz has pulled himself across the floor and rested his head against Sherlock’s leg. Sherlock feels nothing, not even confusion. The boy mumbles something, a thank you, but Sherlock does not respond. He isn’t frozen as he was before, he’s simply too tired to move. Raz starts to move his cheek against the fabric of Sherlock’s blue jeans, back and forth. Sherlock’s fingers find their way into his hair and amuse themselves for awhile, squeezing water out of the ends drop by drop. The boy is still shaking. He moves himself higher onto his knees, rubbing cheeks and nose farther up Sherlock’s thigh. Sherlock does nothing. Raz lifts one hand to his fly and presses his nose directly into Sherlock’s crotch.

Sherlock tightens his fingers in the boy’s hair and pulls him away.

“What are you doing?” he rasps.

“Thanking you,” the boy mumbles, not looking up. Sherlock stares at the side of his face for a moment.

“Don’t,” he says shortly and pushes the boy’s face away, shoving him to the ground. He stays down, curled around himself like some abandoned animal, wet and shivering. Sherlock doesn’t move.

The boy doesn’t touch him again, but he stays there, curled up at Sherlock’s feet, for the rest of the night.


End file.
